A blog about my own journey to a better me

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31 Day Blog Challenge: Day 3.

So I’ve encountered my first issue with doing this blog challenge… topic boredom. One of things where you look at something and it looks amazing as a whole, but the sum of it’s parts might bore you to death. So instead I’ve decided to shake up the topics, but still do the blog challenge. It still counts right? I found another blog challenge on Google so I’ll mish-mash them into something I actually want to blog about.

This tells you more about me: I get bored. The original Day 3 topic was “Why do you blog?” … my answer would have to be “I have a lot to say and I’m probably bored enough to say it.” End of blog post. Onto something else then!

New topic for Day 3: What are you afraid of?

Ah. But of course it needs to be a deep and meaty topic to try and tackle, but here goes!

I have a long list of fears, some crippling and some not. There’s a huge difference between things that make me scared and things I don’t like, but I’m sticking to a fear aspect. Here are a few listed in no particular order: clowns (top of my list, flipping hate clowns, they terrify me!), the dark, small spaces, needles, blood, anaesthetic, heights. These things make me want to cry.

In a major non-tangible sense, I have a fear of failure that prevents me from trying anything new. I tend to give up before I’ve started, that way I keep expectations low and never disappoint myself or anyone else. A few months ago, my colleagues all wanted to embark on a diet challenge for eight weeks. I was podgy, and needed it more than most of my skinnier, prettier colleagues, but immediately pulled out citing that I was “happy” (of course, whilst shovelling chocolate down my throat).

Later on I went home and told boyfriend who told me that it was a great idea and we could get healthy together, and was encouraging, not in the “hey fat girlfriend, you need to lose weight!” kind of way, more in a “cool, let’s do it together!” encouraging kind of way. Weight is always a no-go zone in relationships, he was diplomatic in his approach!

Finally, I caved in and told him that I didn’t want to commit myself to anything because I was afraid everyone would see me fail. He was so shocked that I was admitting defeat before even trying anything, and it made me realise that I’m a compulsive self-sabotager. I decided to try, and after 8 weeks I had done a job that I could be proud of, and I didn’t fail. It was odd that I had achieved something that even I was proud of myself for. I’ve decided to try it more often.

My boss, who is probably the most brilliant human on the planet, also told me once in a conversation “I’d never be pissed off at you for failing, I’d be pissed off at you if you never even tried.”

So whilst I still have a major fear of failure, I try new things more often and give myself a chance to succeed. Progress!